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Hard Shoes: Reflections on Childhood in Washington DC by Gary Lilley Elementary school children develop a survival stoicism about death and violence. Click to read Essay Profile of Author Bio of Author from ETG Essay, Late-breaking Developments Author's Comment on the ETG Experience Updated Bio Click to Purchase Send email to the author (The copyright on this essay is held by the author.  For permission to duplicate: copyright@cunepress.com)

Hard Shoes: Reflections on Childhood in Washington, D.C.
I was a school kid in New York and ran with a group of neighborhood boys crazy into our teenage years. We were rebellious, we forced music, clothes, and thinking to change. We had rivals from different neighborhoods and warred with them continually. We were ballplayers of the serious type and would crush you on our court. Any disagreement that couldn’t be settled with a game could be resolved in a fair first fight. We were irreverent in our young-boy arrogance, but we were safe in the neighborhood’s tolerance. As long as we understood that we were automatically under the discipline of every adult in the neighborhood and knew the exact line not to cross, we were tolerated. Being young was very simple. Now, I’m over forty. I live in Washington, D.C., and nothing is simple anymore.

The end of the ’96 shutdown. The government is back at work, and New York Avenue is a bumper commute. The last few mornings have seen three lanes of winter-nasty cars heading downtown. The city has a shortage of public works equipment, and O Street, a snow-choked apocalypse, is in the line of sight of the commuters. Stranded cars are buried windshield-deep, and homeless men kick through snow toward the kitchen.

The east end of O Street has been bulldozed to a stop at the cross of North Capitol. It is now a makeshift basketball court where I find bullets when the weather is good. Bullets—not the Washington professional basketball players—but shell casings and live rounds. The houses at the east end are dying. There are no trees.

The west end looks on the back of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. In the middle of the block there is a drug house in the apartments that also carry the poet’s name. A chainlink fence separates the school from the street. The amount of federal funding and/or privatization of the D.C. public school system is still in debate. There are no art programs. Artists literally have to walk into the schools. And they do. Some teachers find the children’s drawings and poems frightening.

On the corner there is a candy store owned by an Ethiopian family. Behind bulletproof glass they sell cigarettes one at a time and are as courteous as you will allow. Outside the store, the young crack dealers known as The First ’n’ O Street Crew work the corner. They operate as a collective and push their product by just waiting. They are polite to the Ethiopians and don’t allow any trouble. The young men have marked the alley wall as a boundary, their spot. They have spray painted warnings along its length. Around ominous drawings are scattered names.

The majority of these young men hit the street for the same reason: to take care of the family. They have brothers, sisters, babies, and mothers in desperate lack, and they need to help. And they can’t do that on minimum wage. While some are pulled in by the "gangsta" lifestyle, mystified and commercialized through various media, most of this crew consist of reluctant hustlers. If a forty-hour week on the present minimum wage could pay the rent and buy food, many of them would push burgers.

Everything is political here, especially money to live with. This is O Street, D.C., where there are American citizens with no congressional vote surviving hand-to-mouth. Congress is cutting funds for education and building more prisons. Already chain gangs do the road work in several southern states, and in the Oregon Penitentiary they manufacture a line of blue jeans. I can see the next move coming: prison as a profit-making industry. I see it as plain as a fresh-pressed D.C. license plate. I can also see this crew, under the three-strike law, setting themselves up to become free labor, if not more immediate casualties.

All of the crew wear hard shoes, rough outdoor shoes for urban terrain, workboots, Timberlands. They have microscoped me, looking for addictions. They trust almost no one, especially an "older" black man. Most of the youth here have lived as children in a home without a father. Men have walked in and out of their lives. In their eyes I lack the proof that I haven’t abandoned anyone.

Once the crew came upon me in the alley reading the names on their wall.

"What’s up, man?" the first one asked me.

"I’m reading your wall," I replied.

"Yeah, but why?"

"I want the spirits to guide and protect." They looked into each other and shouldered closer toward me. I knew some of them were armed.

"What are you, some kinda holy man or something?" he asked. "All these names on this wall still live people!"

"Then you should thank the ancestors," I said.

They got silent. At that moment they knew that I was crazy. They didn’t know what to do. The tall one in the back of the group studied my face.

"Rasta, go ’head and bless that wall anyway," he said.

Since then I have lit candles, left offerings to the spirits, and poured libations. I have talked with these young men. I see them as unguided warriors lacking rites of passage. I worry for them.

One night late, I stepped out while the crew were making plans. They were gathered in their big jackets beside a drift of snow. They checked me out and then continued with their discussion.

"I say we come up through the alley behind them," one was saying.

"Naw! They got someone watchin’," said another. "I say we just roll down on ’em!"

"All right," said the tall one, "y’all get ready." I slowed down as I neared them. "What the hell is going on now?" I thought. There had already been several shootings in the city since the blizzard. I could see tit-for-tat being played out right around my door. I didn’t want any of them knocked down in front of me.

Everything inside of me slowed except the fatal scenarios framing in my mind. In D.C., young blacks in Timberlands are considered dangerous. And dangerous is considered deadly. Elementary school children develop a survival stoicism about death and violence. Junior high schools have metal detectors. Yellow police tape has become a metaphor for inner city blues. In my mind I was seeing medical teams, cops, and wailing mothers.

Each hesitant step closer to the crew brought me a different response, each one inadequate. I knew I would have to say something, but I didn’t know what. What words do you say to teenage boys in their hard life, who shoot their guns just to see if they still work? I stood before them, and as I began to speak I noticed that they were making snowballs. A snowball fight. I laughed. They ignored me. I remembered the snowball fights of my youth on winter nights in New York, block versus block. That was long ago when I was a child. Now I’m grown, the First ’n’ O Crew are the children, and nothing is simple.

On July 2, 1996, Dennis was shot and killed by unknown assailants while he was sitting near the wall alone. He was no angel, but he was no hoodlum either. He was sixteen and hustling just to make it. Everyone on O Street has been changed by his death. We remember the night of cordite, flashing lights, and unabashed weeping. He leaves to mourn: his parents, his woman, his child, his neighbors, and his crew.

Profile
The first time I invited Gary Lilley to my small O Street studio in Washington, D.C., was November of 1993, on an extremely cold evening. So cold in fact, that I was wearing a zillion sweaters, and Gary never removed his heavy army coat. As I showed him around we discussed my art and his poetry. He recognized the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson in a picture I had placed high up on a shelf.

"You know," he said, "I used to perform some of my poetry in a pinstripe suit and a hat just like that."

It was then that I knew I had found another one of the blues people, a fellow parishioner of the church of the unconverted.

Continuing in the tradition of the blues, Gary uses his poetry as a means to bear witness and convey truths for the community he is a part of. And just like the music that inspires him, he always manages to find life-affirming humor even in the most painful situations.

—Renée Stout

Bio
Gary Lilley
Place of residence: Washington, D.C.
Birthplace: Hobbsville, North Carolina.
High School: Central High in Gatesville, North Carolina.
Day job: Washington, D.C. Writers Corps.
Education: University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Poetry: African American Review. Drum Voice Review. Greensboro Review. WPFW Anthology.
New volume: Poetry included in forthcoming anthology Beyond the Frontier, edited by E. Ethelbert Miller.
Award: Recipient of Washington, D.C. Commission of the Arts Fellowship for Poetry (1996).
Current projects: Creating a collection of blues-based stories. Recording project with the band Franko Jazz.
Poetry group: The Black Rooster, which includes D.C. writers Ernesto Mercer, D.J. Renegade, Brandon Johnson and meets at Renée Stout’s studio. We hang out at U Street poetry dives such as Mango’s, Kaffa House, and Nyala.
Spoken word: Franko Jazz plays world beat fusion—all original music—and includes Frank Agbro, Sven Abow, Riley McMahn, Flacco, and me. I do vocals and spoken word.
Favorite book: Cane by Jean Toomer.
Craving: Homemade ice cream.

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